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Addressing an audience at the Royal Festival Hall in London, the acclaimed author said "something truly, seriously bad is happening".

“These stages that Trump is going through in the United States and the stirring of racial hatred … a kind of burning of the books as he attacks, as he declares real news as fake news, the law becomes fake news, everything becomes fake news.

“I think of all things that were happening across Europe in the 1930s, in Spain, in Japan, obviously in Germany. To me, these are absolutely comparable signs of the rise of fascism and it’s contagious, it’s infectious. Fascism is up and running in Poland and Hungary. There’s an encouragement about.”

Noting that Aung San Suu Kyi had started speaking of “fake news” in Burma, he added: “These are infectious forms of demagogic behaviour and they are toxic.”

Smiley, reflecting on his long life, makes his final, if brief, appearance in le Carre's new novel, which was published on Thursday.

Copies of 'A legacy of Spies' a new novel by English author John Le Carre are on sale at a bookshop in central LondonCredit:
AFP

"It was terribly hard to write this book during the period of Brexit and the ascendancy of Trump," le Carré told BBC radio.

"And I'd like to think that Smiley was aware of the sense of aimlessness which has entered into all of our minds - we seem to be joined by nothing but fear," he said.

"Smiley, who has spent his life defending the flag in one way or another, feels alienated from it, feels a stranger in his own country, and that’s why we find him and indeed leave him in a foreign place."

Le Carré, whose real name is David Cornwell, said Smiley's dream was to see a unified Europe which helped him justify his actions during the Cold War, a time of treachery and moral ambiguity.

"The dream he had was of a second Reformation, and of a great, peaceful, democratic Europe," he said.

"Because it's such a difficult period in which to write - with Brexit which I detest and Trump whom I also detest - what we are looking at is Europe as the squeezed middle, democratic rule as we understand it being assailed from both sides of the Atlantic and that for Smiley is a big thing to swallow," he said.

Smiley's appearance in the latest book will be his first for 25 years. He made his debut in 1961 in "Call for the Dead" and most famously featured in "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", "The Honourable Schoolboy" and "Smiley's People."